Digital literacy: Digital Literacy: Friend, foe or fad?
- 1. 04/02/16 1 The Integrated Engineering Programme: Digital Literacy for Engineers • What we do • What our constraints are • How we get around them • Our results • The future The IEP and Digital Literacy • Research and patent databases • How to use primary and secondary sources • What tech journalism is and where it comes from • Use of creative commons licenses • Visualisation (diagrams, videos, drawings, maps, presentations) • Platform to write about tech people, developments and organisations • Electronic resources for organised for students throughout their time at UCL • Encourage students to use LinkedIn, MyPortfolio and develop other professional profiles • Instruction on e-mail for teamwork and collaboration Digital capabilities: the six elements © JISC CC BY-NC-ND First Year Assignments/Activities • Prep work: Developing skills using curated web resources • Explanatory video: Create own artwork, use CC license • Team communication: E-mail to improve teamwork • Research report: Get material from ENGins on current research topic and structure using engineering arguments • Ethics report: Use ENGins and primary sources to create report on the ethics of a company • Presentation: Use research material for 5-minute talk • Portfolio: Use MyPortfolio to document project work Second Year Showcase • Includes the presentation competition finals, winning videos, and posters and presentations from team projects Assignments/Activities • Executive summary: Pull out the issues of interest to team from longer paper • Original figure: For executive summary, must properly reference source material used • Law report: Show understanding of IP concepts including copyright, trademark, and patents THE CONSTRAINTS ARE REAL! None of this is easy • ~700 students in each undergraduate year • Crowded lecture rooms: little space for workshop- style interaction • Wide range of English language skills from excellent to very poor • Wide range of experience in teamwork, research, and communication tasks • Many believe digital literacy is irrelevant to engineering Students/Space Staffing/Attitudes • Most engineering staff not formally trained in writing/presentation etc., so often can’t teach it • Traditionally, skills were expected to be taught in high school, or learned at college by osmosis • Some believe digital literacy is irrelevant to engineering and is a waste of students time
- 2. 04/02/16 2 How do we cope with these constraints? Students/Space • Socratic method to discuss issues in large LT • Peer-marking to enhance learning process and speed feedback • Clearly spelled-out rubrics to help students both do and mark • All assignments clearly defined as technical Staffing/Attitudes • Highly-trained PGTAs to mark mark non-peer- reviewed assignments • Sharing of rubrics with departments for consistency of marking • Feedback to departments on participation, performance, and plagiarism So, does it work? The Future • Customisation to individual students • Improving rules to aid peer-marking • Ever-increasing relevance to engineering discipline • Optimisation of rubrics to improve consistency across all markers and student trust • Improving PGTA team In Summary • We cover material across all digital literacies • With one member of full-time staff, we are able to mark and give feedback on 4500+ individual pieces of coursework • The new ENGins site allows students gives students both a creative and research platform • Students show progress across all areas • For more detail on any of the issues please contact: Dr Sunny Bains [email protected]